Friday, January 15, 2010

I've seen Donald Douglas play the victim card before, but lately, the "attacks" he's alleging just don't seem to be there...

I first noticed this a few days ago. Donald titled a recent American Power post, Think Progress Goes After Michael Steele - And Dana Loesch!, but nowhere in his post or at the Think Progress post about which he's writing, does anyone go after Dana Loesch (who I gather from the context is a con radio mouthpiece, a teabagger, and a twitterer.) The piece at Think Progress pretty matter-of-factly discusses Dana's reaction when Steele abruptly cancelled his appearance on her show--including her calling him a "butt sniffer," and Donald's whine seems to primarily take issue with the fact that Think Progress accurately reported what Dana said. It's true that some of the readers who commented at the Think Progress article aren't fond of Dana Loesch and say so, but that's hardly the same thing as saying the blog or any of the writers there "went after" her. ...except to Donald, obviously.

But to get an idea of how deep-seated is the left's hatred of traditionalism, get a load of Michael Stickings attack on Theodore Olson. Again, be sure to have read Olson's essay and to have watched the video. Olson is deeply authentic. And recall that his wife, attorney Barbara Olson, died on Flight 77 on September 11 when al Qaeda terrorists drove it into the Pentagon. Here's Stickings' attack on Olson, and thus conservatives in toto:

It is indeed extremely helpful that Ted Olson, a prominent conservative Republican legal figure, is a prominent supporter of same-sex marriage, and the "conservative case" he makes for it is indeed a strong one ....

Conservative opposition to same-sex marriage, rooted in bigotry (what else?), is indeed deeply hypocritical given conservatives' admiration of the institution of marriage, but what Olson doesn't seem to understand, or at least to acknowledge, is that conservatism, or at least the dominant strains of contemporary conservatism, does not consider the "principle of equality" to be anything "bedrock" or "central." If it did -- if conservatives really were committed to "the revolutionary concept expressed in the Declaration of Independence" -- Olson wouldn't be such a rare exception among his own kind.

Olson has a leading voice on the right, but he's speaking rationally inside a hurricane of irrationality and about justice to a political movement that has embraced injustice as a driving force. I admire him for this, but I fear he'll get nowhere.

In other words, Olson's a outlier from the bastion of evil, or something.

Now where I come from, saying that a lawyer's case is a strong one, that he is committed to "the revolutionary concept expressed in the Declaration of Independence," even when others in his party are not, and that one admires the man, would be considered compliments, not attacks. Being an outlier from the bastion of evil would be viewed as a pretty good thing, too... Stickings isn't taking issue with Olson... He's taking issue Donald, and the irrational bigotry and injustice that he's spouting. And rather than arguing against what Olson's saying, Donald's trying to pretend that it is "the left" is attacking Olson--whose wife died in a plane on 9/11, don't forget. (Is there a point to bringing that up, as though it has some bearing on the argument Olson is making or the article Stickings wrote, or is Donald just channelling Rudy, and tossing that Republican go to "Hail Mary" 9/11 pass?)

I can appreciate that Donald and his friends on the right often get attacked by those who don't agree with 'em (just as folks on the left do by some on the right), but making up stories of persecution isn't the way to change folks' minds, Donald. If you can't speak truth, you ought not speak.